This course is a continuation of EURO1008. It will focus on early modern Europe from the 16th to 18th centuries. It discusses the gradual emergence of a “European model of development” characterized by representative forms of government, essential freedom of economic activity and protection of private property rights, as well as a set of cultural values stimulating growth and social development.

The course will discuss the formation of European composite and (eventually) nation states and their interminable domestic and external conflicts, which crucially led to the projection of European power overseas. It will analyse cultural conflicts attendant to the break-up of medieval Christian unity, and the rise of national and regional diversities still extant today. In the process, two competing models of societies evolved: an essentially market-driven, potentially liberal, decentralized structure, and a conservative-autocratic model of governance, typified here by the Dutch United Provinces and the kingdom of France, respectively. Out of their conflicts arose the all-European cultural movement called the Enlightenment, which arguably remains the single most important source for the values and principles on which the modern European Union and a common European identity are founded.